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You know very well by now that here at LearnWorlds we always go the extra mile for our customers. But did you know that sometimes we go the extra 654 miles for them?
All Roads Lead to Rome
654 miles is the distance between Athens and Rome, where I had the pleasure to fly to, a few weeks ago, to meet up close with a power-duo of star trainers and early LearnWorlds customers and uncover their inspiring story of success.
I am also immensely proud that they were the first recipients of The Owly 🦉, our newly-minted, soon-to-become-classic LearnWorlds award (more on that later).
Unfortunately, I won’t be able to name any names or give away any hints about their niche. This dynamic couple runs a hugely successful online school in a very competitive market and the fact that they use LearnWorlds to power their school is a competitive advantage. it’s one of the ingredients of the secret sauce that enabled them to grow this big and acts as a “moat” that protects them against the competition.
Their school runs on the white-labeled edition of LearnWorlds, which means that you would have to do some digging on the code underneath to discover that our tech is behind this.
Let’s just call them Mr. and Mrs. D for now 🙂
An Epic Journey to 30k Course Sales
What I can definitely say, though, is that their school just had its third birthday. During this time they succeeded to scale massively to more than 140K students and 30 thousand course sales! Try to wrap your head around this number for a moment.
And I can vouch that their future looks even brighter.
Note that we are talking about high-ticket courses, with very specialized and up-to-date content, targeted to professionals who are happy to pay top dollar to acquire the edgy new skills that can land them the next great gig or a coveted promotion and raise. So you can imagine that some of the products they sell are priced at hundreds and even thousands of dollars.
Don’t get me wrong; this hasn’t been an easy ride at all and success didn’t come overnight. Our heroes had to fight tooth and nail for every one of those customers and sales, battling the same frustrations that some of you do every day.
Their playbook is both simple and hard:
- They invest in the development of high-quality content, they author beautiful courses, and even give some for free in order to attract more precious leads.
- Then they launch attractive offers to finally convert those leads to customers.
- And they keep adding new great content to upsell and cross-sell.
In the mean time, they have to respond to numerous emails, patiently support and guide students, even deal with a nasty customer or two over a refund.
They never shy away from the hard work needed to nail a customization in the design. And they are always patient and cooperative, even when experiencing a slight platform delay because they just launched a new offer to 140K eager students that rush to log in to the school, all at the same moment.
But with hard quality work, persistence, and dedication they managed to pull this off: they became the recognized leaders in their space, running neck-on-neck with the top global MOOCs that have at their disposal budgets of tens of millions of dollars and dozens of instructors. Well, Mr and Mrs D didn’t hesitate a moment to go after the big boys and to beat them in their own game.
In fact, their sales grow by more than 50% every year, consistently beating their own records time after time. Especially their Black Friday offers, sales tactics and sales are a sight to behold:)
When Edupreneurs Travel – the Digital Nomad Lifestyle
This success is what allowed them to realize one of their life-dreams: they hopped into a flight from North America to London and got to spend six amazing weeks crisscrossing Europe, from one beautiful city to the next, in search of culture, tastes, relaxation, and of course inspiration. Their plan was to recharge their creative batteries and invest this energy right back in to this amazing online business of theirs.
Of course, this wasn’t all fun and play: following the modern nomadic lifestyle they had to squeeze some work along all this traveling. Making sure the online school works perfectly, overseeing sales and certificates, meeting in person with a few customers from the Old Continent, and even launching new courses and offers from airports and train stations.
But this is one of the best things that online entrepreneurship does for you: you don’t have to be physically there. With the right team and the right tech supporting you and watching your back, you can perfectly well launch a course from a café in Rome sipping an Italian Espresso or a Parisian brasserie with a glass of Merlot (don’t want to indulge in the whole bottle before you hit that send button on your newsletter though…).
So when we learned that Mr. and Mrs. D were coming to Europe, we decided to go out to meet them in person. It almost required an international man- (and woman-) hunt tracking those two down, as they were hopping from city to city, but I finally managed to corner them in Rome and flew there to meet them (poor me).
When we met in the Eternal City, over some delicious Italian Pasta, several hours just flew by, filled with stories, anecdotes, tips and tricks, and even the occasional horror story, about creating and selling the most amazing courses. It’s a tale of ambitious goals, hard work, and perseverance, but also an amazing journey of growth for both our teams.
Tales like those of Mr and Mrs D. is what keeps us going here at LearnWorlds. Every single day we get to know amazing creative people, learn new things from them that help us become better at doing the thing we love most: making it possible for everyone to realize their teaching potential to the fullest.
Mr. and Mrs. D. and their school most probably would have succeeded, with one form or another, using some other platform. However, our platform’s unique features and our team’s relentless dedication to learner experience and customer success helped make it the success it is today.
And we revel in the success of our customers.
Introducing The Owly 🦉
During our meeting, it became apparent that the reason our partnership succeeded was our firm common conviction that learning and education are actual superpowers that every normal person can and should employ to improve their lives and become the best they can. And both our teams share the mission of making these superpowers accessible to as many people as possible.
And here I would like to introduce you to a new little friend of ours.
This trip presented me with the opportunity to personally award Mr and Mrs D. for their success with The Owly 🦉, the little feathery companion of Goddess Athena, a timeless symbol of knowledge, wisdom, and erudition. They were happily surprised and moved by this little token of appreciation. I don’t know if our little feathered friend gave them additional motivaton but judging from their sales since then, it definitely brought them luck:)
Mr. and Mrs. D have a few more countries to visit in Europe, so we hope to receive them again, after yet another year of growth and huge sales.
And, as you can imagine, I am looking forward to flying over to where any of you is going to be, to celebrate your success and give you your very own copy of The Owly 🦉
Panos Siozos is the CEO and Co-Founder of LearnWorlds. He holds a PhD in Educational Technology and has worked extensively as a computer science educator, software engineer, IT manager and researcher in many EU funded research projects. Before following the startup route, he was working in the European Parliament as a policy adviser for research and innovation.
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